Adding vignettes in After Effects

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A great way to guide your viewer's eye back into the middle of your historic or archival image is to add a vignette. Not only can you create a vignette in Adobe Photoshop, but you can also create one in Adobe After Effects. In this movie, author Richard Harrington demonstrates how to add a vignette to your image in After Effects.

- One thing I like to do in post-production…is actually add a vignette back in.…This way, it guides the viewer's eye…into the middle of the photo,…and it seems a bit more like it was actually done in camera.…Remember. A vignette would normally apply…evenly at the edges, so any zooms…would still be affected by the vignette.…The vignette wouldn't scale, just the image inside.…So by adding this in post, we can simulate…this camera aberration.…What I suggest is choosing Layer, New, Solid.…

Sample a color that's representative of your shadows.…And click OK. It'll add it to the scene.…Now what you can do is come up to the Masks.…Choose the Ellipse Tool and double click.…You'll see that it adds it to the circle.…You can choose to subtract rather than add,…and it will go to the edges.…Now, if need, you can click to add more points.…Just take your pen tool. This will allow you,…if you want to make this a little less perfect,…to adjust and create a slightly more customized vignette.…

There we go. You can adjust the Bezier handles,…

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Released

6/26/2017

In this course, Rich Harrington explores the world of documentary storytelling, using various techniques in Adobe Photoshop and After Effects to transform damaged photos into brand-new works of art. Throughout the course, Rich covers basic image editing techniques in Photoshop such as toning, cropping, sharpening, and resizing. He also shows how to add movement to photos in After Effects, which can help you create a dramatic story.